Modern leaders have a lot that they have to take on their shoulders. From making tough calls to maintaining the vision of the organisation, it’s no mean feat to be the person that everyone turns to. But, for all their best traits, not all CEOs know how they come across or how to put their best foot forward when taking on new and complex responsibilities.

Luckily, we’ve teamed up with Jennifer Reischel-Berg, Head of Internal Communications at Bravura Solutions for our breakfast event last Thursday. In doing so, we created a comprehensive guide to connecting with your leaders, with a bit of help from drama school training.

To get things started, there was a whip round to find out what kinds of issues people were facing in their leadership comms. This ranged from figuring out how to influence leaders quickly, what sort of pointers helped when they didn’t have the answers, and refreshing personal brands to generate colleague buy-in.

The first 90 days

After that, Jennifer began taking us through the strategic imperatives that need to happen in a new leaders’ first 90 days. This included:

• Determining key messaging to increase transparency
• Stakeholder mapping for building relationships
• Understanding preferences for communications

This tactic works to obviously give communicators all the information they need to make a good strategy, but also gives you some idea of how much hand holding and encouragement might be needed for your leaders to succeed. Tailoring it to a place they feel comfortable in already helps generate more authentic communication to your colleagues.

It is also an opportunity to establish the themes of the communications you’ll be sending out through your leader. Jennifer stressed the importance of understanding imperatives like this from day one to avoid unresolved situations boiling over unchecked.

By and large, these themes were

• Aspirations for the future
• Strategy and how people can support it
• Increasing visibility
• Change situations and their expectations

Henry, 106’s founder, pointed out that in his client work he asked leaders the question of “when did you last make a decision in line with your company values?” In his experience, many were taken aback by this question and were not proactively folding in these concepts in their decision-making as they should be.

Channel overview

Jennifer took us through what channel rollouts she had used previously, stressing the importance of covering all bases and respecting all means of receiving information in the process. Especially with global teams, you must respect and embed people’s routines and schedules.

Town halls and moderating feedback

In response to Henry’s anecdote, one attendee talked about a time when a town hall was held in a different time zone, meaning the London team had to struggle out of bed for an 8am virtual meet. Understanding global impact and how to embed yourself keeps leaders from distancing themselves from the workforce.

This led to another discussion on the merits and drawbacks of pre-vetting questions at town halls; on the one hand, you can prepare your CEOs in advance for difficult topics, on the other, you end up flooded with hundreds of sometimes irrelevant questions that clog up the session.

If the latter happens, you can theme and group your questions together to answer them with the attention they deserve in due course.

Personal branding

Henry then posed the question: Do leaders know what they stand for in terms of their personal branding? With many coming from certain work cultures, it’s difficult to know if they understand how they come across to their people and if they know how to act like a leader in a new environment.

In one anonymous anecdote, one of the leaders thought they were much funnier than they were in their Zoom updates to colleagues. The internal communications team were put in a unique position of having to explain this to not put off colleagues without diluting the leaders’ authenticity.

Video comms

Jennifer then described her experience using video communications for greater leadership visibility. This wasn’t just a simple message from the CEO but rather a discussion with a fellow member of the leadership team about company developments.

This prompted an interesting discussion about the nuances of leadership video comms. When is information best to come from the CEO and when is it better to find out from another leadership cohort? With segmented teams, some appreciate hearing different updates from those closer to their realm of work, rather than a top down declaration.

Jennifer also warned against minutely scripting all correspondence to colleagues as it makes for inhuman and disconnected communications. Instead, try bullet pointing and hitting key themes allowing leaders to phrase the points in their own words and garner more authenticity.

High status/Low status

Jennifer then brought her acting chops to proceedings. This was the acting exercise of low status high status.

A character of low status is subordinate to the higher-status character, accommodating their actions to the other’s cues. The status the characters have between one another is recognisable in the body language, actions, and manner of speaking of the actors.

When applied to leaders, this helped them understand how to adapt their energies to different situations in the organisation.

Although a good means of understanding these interactions, there are ways of working in each status that can benefit you. For example, when interacting with some stakeholders, a lower status tone of “trying to help” can gain you more buy-in rather than insisting you know what’s best.

CEO communications and engagement diary

Jennifer then introduced us to the actual calendar strategy planning she used in the past.

Key events included:

• Monthly video comms
• Townhall/SLT meetings
• Regular site visits

As the months went on, from June to August, closer proximity meetings could be introduced like coffee socials and annual engagement surveys to better connect with different teams.

Top tips for building a relationship with your CEO

Always be aware of their pain points. What challenges are they facing and how can internal communications solve them?

Understand and build on their personal brand and communication style.

Bring solutions, not problems – think 3 steps ahead and challenge when necessary.

Tie everything back to the company’s purpose, values, and strategic goals

Structure and colour-code your written meetings’ agenda under the headers:

• Need to know
• For discussion/your input
• FYI/in progress

Listen first, then share updates in a meeting – no more than 3 topics per hour.

Focus on thought-leadership and partnering instead of content creation

Summary

It was an invigorating and engaged session, with everyone sharing human and strategic insights that made for closer comms and impactful collaboration with leaders. Ultimately, understanding how to bring out their best sides and knowing how they operate intimately brought the best rewards as well as aligning with colleague expectation.